


something beautiful

by MavenMorozova



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grey Maul, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kissing, Light Side Maul, Maulsoka, One Shot, POV Ahsoka Tano, Request Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25889842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MavenMorozova/pseuds/MavenMorozova
Summary: The Revenge of the Sith has been enacted. The Jedi and clones are dead. And it seems that Maul is the only one left for Ahsoka to turn to.
Relationships: Darth Maul/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42
Collections: Maulsoka Fanfic Writers (Discord)





	something beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> @sachidiva on tumblr requested prompt #6 for Maulsoka: _“You can let your guard down, you know…Please, let me in. I can help you.”  
> _  
>  I'm sorry that this took so long 😭😭😭 but I'm so glad i got to this one because it makes me so happy and hurt so much  
> enjoy!

“You can let your guard down, you know…Please, let me in. I can help you.”

Ahsoka is tired of running. She is  _ so  _ tired. She is fucking  _ exhausted _ . Maul’s words are like a blanket over her head in a harsh storm in Hoth, warm sunlight in the dregs of Coruscant. She wants to acquiesce, she really does. There is nowhere for her to go, and everything is ending, falling into ashes around her.

Yet, those words are so unlike him. So she braces herself before she speaks again.  _ Deep breath in, deep breath out. _ “Why would I ever trust you? You’ve tried to kill us so many times over the past few years, and now you want to  _ help  _ me?” She scoffs, attempting a semblance of her classic sass and indignation. “I don’t buy it.”

“Then that’s your problem,” Maul says, and one of his shoulders ticks upwards, as if he would like to say something else that is vaguely bothering him. For better or for worse, he says nothing, lips pressed together tightly.

Ahsoka sighs, closing the distance between them in an effort to communicate properly. At least, that is what she tells herself. “Just...tell me why. Why you’re willing to help me, after everything. And how? Where would we even go?”  _ Everyone dead, everyone gone. _ Anakin, Obi-Wan, Barriss, all the Jedi, soon all the clones, too. Democracy. “Where in the galaxy is even safe?”

Maul’s golden eyes flash in the darkness, and he swallows, eyes darting to her lips with an emotion that Ahsoka can’t place. Is he... _ nervous _ ? And if so—

“I can protect you,” are Maul’s words, spilling like a flood from his mouth, and the two of them are so close that Ahsoka can feel his breath on her face and just a bit on her montrals, too. Briefly, her mind muses that they are far too close, but Ahsoka brushes the thought away like an annoying fly. “Why?” she asks.

“Isn’t it odd?” Maul replies, eyes darting around the hangar, landing on the bodies of dead clones and broken machinery scattered across the floor. Anywhere but her, right in front of him. “Odd that we’ve only fought all these years, when all I’ve ever done is admire you?”

Ahsoka blinks once. His words are coming much too fast, much too soon. She can’t understand. Or maybe the problem is that she  _ won’t _ . Her mind won’t  _ let  _ her.

“Everyone has died, just like I warned you,” Maul whispers, and a reflection of his old self is back, self-righteous, arrogant. And yet, after everything, painfully  _ correct _ . He’d predicted everything. Or rather, his speculations about Sidious had been the truth, not falsehoods.

Ahsoka wishes she could bite back her previous words from that moment the Mandalorian throne room, when he had offered her his hand, but she knows that everything has passed. Nothing can change, except for the future. “Why didn’t you say anything, all those times when you and Savage did those terrible things...why didn’t you tell me?” She keeps her question vague, unwilling to give voice to the confession that scares her the most.

Maul’s face twists, his red-and-black skin contorting into wildly different shapes as he grimaces. Or sneers. Ahsoka is not sure which. But he wouldn’t be sneering at her right now—that can’t be right. Perhaps she’s just overthinking the whole thing, which would make sense, considering that she’s still shell-shocked by the attack from the clone troopers, devastated by the massive loss in the Force, and of course, the fact that her heart is racing and she is afraid to admit why.

“I didn’t tell you anything because I was convinced that I was right,” Maul mutters, and though his words are barely above a whisper, right now they sound like thunder. “I was so caught up in my own world, my own vendetta against Kenobi.” Maul’s face sours further when he mentions Obi-Wan, but he nevertheless continues. “But then the end of the war neared. Sidious was becoming more powerful, and I could sense it in every waking moment. It...terrified me.” He looks terrified to admit it, too.

“I began to change my course, to focus on the Revenge of the Sith, the Grand Plan that Sidious had always blabbered on about. It was happening all at once, and I had to warn you.”

“Warn  _ me _ ? Why me?”

He doesn’t say anything to that, simply stepping even closer so that their tops are touching. Ahsoka sucks in a breath, and she sees, vaguely, that goosebumps have formed over Maul’s multicolored skin. His breath his hot on her face as she cranes her neck to look up at him, as he towers over her. “Maul—?”

Without warning, he presses his lips to hers, strong and sure and filled with purpose, as if he’s been waiting years for this moment. Perhaps he has been. Although—most likely not in a hangar full of dead bodies and after a galaxy-wide crisis.

And with a sad sense of bittersweet grace, Ahsoka realizes that this might indeed be the best time, despite everything. She has been lonely, after all, and Maul is here and has been waiting all this time for  _ her _ . She should have known.

So she kisses him back, and it distracts her from the aching in her chest, a hole in her heart for her lost brothers and sisters, felled in one swoop from the Sith. A pang of extra sadness hits her when she realizes that the clones will most likely have been killed in self-defense from the Jedi. Generals killing soldiers, soldiers killing generals. Mass genocide on two accounts.

Maul is deepening the kiss, his hands slipping from the sides of her head down her lekku and onto her breaths, the feeling sending shivers down her spine. She lets him, she  _ encourages  _ him, moaning his name softly, trying and desperately failing to forget the world as it is.

Maybe pushing it away is the wrong thing to do—maybe she should embrace it, as Maul seems to be doing. They can work through it together. But first, she has to accept his offer.

“Maul?” Ahsoka breathes, and he pulls away, a question in his gaze. “I’ll come with you.”

“You will?” he asks, and in this moment, brutality aside, he looks like a hopeful child. “I can’t believe that this is real.”

“Me neither,” she answers, and they both know that her meaning is blisteringly different. Their reality has become twisted. But perhaps, it seems, something beautiful has come of it.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope u liked it! im so used to writing darker and smuttier maulsoka that this was quite a jarring change for me but it was a lot of Feels to write and i loved that  
> comments and kudos are always appreciated<3


End file.
